Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Berlin rabbi harassed and spat upon by Arabic-speaking attackers

It's apparently in vogue to spit on Jews in Germany. Unless Jews are making false claims but they would never do that. Would they?

BERLIN (JTA) — A Berlin rabbi was verbally abused and spat on, one of several recent attacks on Jews in the German capital.

The incident, which took place on Friday night, is under investigation. The perpetrators have not been identified.

Yehuda Teichtal, a Berlin community rabbi and president of Chabad
Lubavitch in the capital, reported that two men shouted at him in
Arabic, and spat on him after he left services at his synagogue in the
Wilmersdorf district around 9 p.m. He was with one of his young
children.

Teichtal told Die Welt that it was especially shocking to be
physically attacked, adding that he had never experienced anything
similar in 23 years in Berlin, though he has frequently heard “shitty
Jew” from passersby.

In a statement to German media, Teichtal said that despite such
attacks in Berlin schoolyards and streets, he was convinced that “most
people in Berlin want Jews to be able to live openly as Jews, without
fear of being cursed at, spat on or beaten up.”

“Of course we won’t hide ourselves,” he wrote. “We will continue to
build on a foundation of love, tolerance, dialogue and education.”

The Berlin-based Anti-Semitism Research and Information Center
reported that the district in which Teichtal lives and works,
Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf, had 80 reported ant-Semitic incidents last
year, the second highest level in Berlin, second only to the Mitte
district with 146. In all, some 1,800 incidents were reported in the
capital in 2018, an increase of nearly 20 percent above the previous
year.